


ember & umbra

by thebinarysunset (SeeingGhosts)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Bloodline - Claudia Gray
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Loss, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Pregnancy, lowercase is intentional, takes place in four different times which is fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-20 08:15:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11916843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeeingGhosts/pseuds/thebinarysunset
Summary: leia's life has been marked by loss, traced through her bloodline and branching out into the galaxy. but never did she think so much loss would come from her own son.





	1. i.

realizing luke was her brother meant joy. realizing vader was her father meant devastation. 

her first reaction was to deny it, because certainly it couldn't be possible. not the man she had spent her life fighting against, the one who had caused her so much pain. but the more she thought, the more she felt, the more she began to understand this truth, horrible as it was.

even now, as the battle of endor belonged to another year and a different era, the revelation still felt raw. it was something she hadn't understood to be a wound until it refused to heal. she, a skywalker, a daughter of a man whose face she had never seen. 

she would always be an organa. that was how she comforted herself. alderaan, though wiped from the endless sky, was still her home. those were the parents she knew. even if her blood belonged to anakin skywalker, her heart belonged to bail organa. she was the daughter of a man who fought only for peace, not the daughter of a murderer. 

if only he was still around to guide her, in more than just her foggy memories. she was thinking so much about parentage, so much about the love she felt in addition to the hatred which now felt so much sharper knowing that it was aimed toward the man whose existence led to her own life. 

it wouldn't matter so much if she wasn't about to become a parent herself. 

with the first anniversary of the battle of endor approaching, the birth of her child was coming too. it had been months, indeed, but everything had flown by and any day her list of titles would expand to include one more: mother. 

as a mother, she could only hope to follow the path laid by her own mothers. breha and padme, royal but far from aloof, who valued compassion and understanding and doing the right thing even when it was difficult. that was how she viewed her work as a senator, but somehow it felt so different to know she was shaping one boy's life instead of the curves of countless people. 

he was all hers. of course others would be there to raise him, but no one else carried him inside and felt his light and his shadow like she did. he was all hers, and she wasn't sure just what to feel. joy, yes. fear, of course. confusion, most of all. 

she rushed to welcome the new child to the galaxy, as much as she could manage with a baby on the way. there were so many things, ltitle things she never would've considered before, that now seemed vital. perhaps most vital of all was names.

names were strange. there were so many people that had helped her, so many that she could honor and thank. but that also meant names were important, and she spent hour after hour thinking and trying to recruit han to help her. they would have to agree on this, of course. little arguments were okay for little things. but both of them knew that naming their child needed to be a matter with complete consensus.

of course, this seemed near impossible to come by. whatever suggestions they came up with for one another seemed good enough...which meant that they clearly weren't good enough to fit their son. 

aside from creating the anxieties of becoming a mother, this child meant hope. hope that she could overcome the darkness that remained in the galaxy, hope that she could be a truly good mother. so then it seemed natural to name him after who had once been her only hope.

ben. three letters, one syllable. not unlike his father's name, she realized. as soon as it came up, murmured under her breath in a brainstorming session, it only felt right. deep within she decided that would be the name for her son, no matter what han thought. fortunately, han seemed to share her devotion to the name.

so it came to be - ben solo would be his name.

with a name determined, she turned to other things. at first she scurried around, trying to collect trinkets and furniture and clothing. that made han laugh, mostly because decided half of it was unimportant. he was right, she knew that, but she just wanted to make the best for her son. han assured her that it would be fine. 

finally, when she was resting after a day of trying to orchestrate this desired perfection, she decided she had done enough. if anything else was necessary, she could fetch it once ben was born. or, better yet, get han or someone else to fetch it for her. with this thought curling up the edges of her lips, she moved to a new idea, what else needed to be done before ben arrived.

in an instant, her parents returned to her mind, a usual occurrence throughout the war but now even more prevalent. something about becoming a parent herself made her own parents feel more distant even though she increasingly thought about them. primarily someone's child her entire life, now she was someone's parent. child no more.

it was time to let go of them. bail, breha, padme, anakin, vader. they had guided her enough. though they were all gone, she still felt their presence in her every action. that wouldn't change. but they would just be spirits as opposed to guiding lights. 

or so she told herself. letting them go felt like her own action, her own choice. but since ben was coming, it didn't feel that she had much of a choice.

once he was born, she was certain she would lose a part of herself.


	2. ii.

he was always told how lucky he was to have parents like those. heroes and leaders in the war, actual royalty for that matter.

and he was a skywalker, too. they wouldn't let him forget that.

that was what he had always been told. if that was his family, certainly he was destined for something legendary too. except he hadn't done anything yet. there was nothing he could do, not as far as he could see. but he kept hearing that time and time again. it was just a comment but it seemed like a warning - you *must* become something great or you will be forgotten or worse.

he was supposed to be great like his parents. fair enough. except he felt like he didn't see enough of them to understand what made them so great. not since he was little, and even then.

neglect was the wrong word. neglect implied that it was intentional, that they didn't care. they did care. they just weren't around to show it.

he tried not to blame them. he had tried not to blame them since he was old enough to think about blaming anyone. but every time he found himself alone again those feelings of fear and abandonment bubbled up again.

surely he was doing something wrong. he needed to find an answer, a way for him to be the most important thing in his parents' lives because it just didn't feel like that. so he was doing something wrong, and they didn't stay around enough for him to fix it. to him, it was an unspoken lesson. they weren't trying to tell him of his inadequacy, but they didn't need to. it was clear.

something needed to change. that had been whispered under everyone's breath since he was old enough to walk. no one ever said such a thing to his face or loudly, but he heard it all the same. he whispered it under his own breath, too. part of him thought there was always someone listening. not his parents. someone else.

something needed to change to solve the problem of him. the way he felt made him feel more, and when he didn't know what to do with himself he lashed out. usually when his parents were there. usually, because when they weren't he just felt too empty to do much of anything.

nevertheless, it was a problem. all of it.

the one solution, decided for him, was to go train to be a jedi with the famed luke skywalker, a member of the family and a jedi knight.

he had demonstrated a connection to the force. his mother, leia, had always felt it. and sometimes in the smaller things, it became clear that he had both power and potential. it just needed refinement. he couldn't do that on his own, surely he couldn't. and he was always on his own. no more of that.

that would be it.

he wasn't happy to leave his parents, but that was mostly because it didn't feel different. they would be separated, yes, and so much would change. but, even before this shift, his parents were rarely there, always caught up in their own lives and jobs and reputations as of course they would be. the only difference was that he was going somewhere entirely different. that was all.

he struggled to admit to himself that, more than anything else, he was scared to go. even if he was unhappy with what he knew, it was familiar. he was used to it. training to be a jedi was something new entirely, something that neither of his parents had experienced and neither of them could begin to explain.

but it was nice to think he wouldn't be so alone. other people training, from all over the galaxy, eager and strong and maybe even friendly.

or perhaps all he would be was luke skywalker's nephew. leia organa's and han solo's son. that was all he had ever been. he feared few things more than other people's names overtaking his own. but he also didn't have the faintest idea of how to make a name for himself.

no. no more thinking of that. he wanted to think of not being alone. because he had been alone for so long. near alone.

for the longest time, he thought his only constant companion was a voice. since he liked to consider himself not a child anymore, he tried to convince himself that he had made up the voice himself to help him feel better. but it seemed like it came from something out of his reach, something separate, no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise.

he was told he had more power than he realized. he was told he could be a leader in ways that would far surpass anything he knew. he was told he was perfect. he was told his parents couldn't understand this, maybe even envied him for this, and could not treat him fairly and well because of this.

they were enticing, those words. it was a good explanation for why his parents weren't there, one that made him more important than the jobs that had always been the excuse. it made sense, and when he felt the most confused and upset about a lack of attention he reminded himself of those words as if they were fact. a greater destiny was comforting.

now if only he could understand how to reach it.

he figured that, even though it hadn't really been his decision, going to train to be a jedi was his first step. it seemed to match in with the voice, the words.

he knew this voice had nothing to do with the jedi. it felt like standing in shadows and looking up into the sky and feeling so far because the darkness stretched out forever. that wasn't the jedi.

but if he didn't go to train, surely the voice would just fade away. he couldn't be destined to be so powerful if he simply stayed stagnant.

he tried to reconcile the words with the unspoken message of his parents. it was nearly impossible to do such a thing.

were they trying to fix him? what exactly about him was so broken? the worst thing he could think of - which was what he thought about a lot - was that maybe nothing was broken. but even as his full, complete self, he wasn't enough.

it was no wonder he would much rather listen to the voice.

leaving was the final strike. what ever he had with his parents would vanish as soon as he went away. no one would say it but everyone would know it.

he left to lose them, and lose them he did.


	3. iii.

he was gone.

she was told not to blame herself, but those words evaporated easily. she had promised herself to tell ben about darth vader, about the truth of their bloodline, but had never found the right time.

she had no choice in finding that right time, as she needed to tell him as everyone else in the galaxy found out, a political attack leading to personal devastation. but she had sent out a personal message to him, hoping that it would reach him and he would understand why it was a secret for so long. they hadn't spoken in so long and then went that message, part explaining and part begging for forgiveness.

she chastised herself in the midst of her pain. keeping secrets, and such a vital one, too. 

her message, earnest as it was, was the beginning of the end. it wasn't the message itself but what it implied. 

oh, my son, i wanted to tell you about our family but i couldn't because i didn't know how to say it to anyone and especially not to you, my son, you who have always carried a darkness inside that feels so much like his and i didn't know how you would react because i never do know how you will react, my son.

a lack of trust. he was an adult, had been for several years, and she kept silent. a lack of trust, and perhaps what seemed like a lack of love. 

she prayed that he hadn't thought that. that wasn't it at all. unconsciously she had kept this secret because of love. finding out about vader was shattering and she didn't know what it might do to her son. she didn't want him to suffer. she didn't want him to hurt because of it.

but now she might never know exactly what he thought. 

she guessed from what she knew. betrayed, he had sought out every trace of vader he could find as if to make up for a gap he hadn't known existed. and then he embraced it completely. more than completely. 

a new darth vader, that was the echo.

vader's torture outlived him. it wasn't enough to make her scream and beg for mercy, or to kill off the only parents she had ever known before her eyes, or to make her suffer knowing she was his daughter. no, he had to take her son, too. her quiet and conflicted and darkness-laced son, carrying on a legacy he hadn't known about until a few years prior.

darth vader brought suffering, suffering that might last to her death. that was her father. that was her heritage. and oh, it showed.

she was desperate to talk to luke of family and finding out what went wrong and if there was any path to resolution.

but he was gone. because of what ben had done, he had vanished. he blamed himself for missing the darkness. leia had told him about the shadows but he assured her they would not grow. he had smiled then. 

that was luke. always optimistic. always looking for the bright side because he had always found a way through. 

not this time. 

luke's story of anakin returning to the light just prior to his death brought her a kind of solace that she was almost ashamed to have. she knew light remained in her son and that maybe he could come back, too. after all, he had only just turned. it was the result of years of whispers in his ears, salt rubbed into the wounds of his doubts, but perhaps it was reversible.

he had only just turned. he was only just bad. he was still out there, she could still feel him, ben, still out there in the galaxy somewhere. she wanted him back so badly. surely he wanted it too. he had only just turned. 

luke would be able to help if he hadn't disappeared. that wasn't like him, to turn away when people he cared about needed help. but it also wasn't like him to have everything fall apart so completely around him. she tried not to have any kind of resentment toward him. surely he was just as lost as she was.

but she needed someone. something. she tried to find it.

han didn't know how to handle it. to be fair, neither did she. but their lives, already mostly spent away from one another, untethered completely. as much as they loved each other and wanted to make it out of this time of pain, it became clear that they couldn't be with one another. their bickering became more common, their inability to figure out their own feelings made it impossible to share them with one another. now it seemed they had been falling apart for years. running away was natural.

han went to his old ways of smuggling and adventure. she devoted herself to the still budding resistance. at the same time she tried to ignore the fact that the resistance was fighting against the very order that her son was joining. 

it was easier to keep the evil faceless and nameless, and so often that was what they did for themselves. it was easier to think they were all irredeemable, knowing exactly what they were doing and doing it anyway because they were wretched beings. 

knowing her son was there brought a name, a face, and an image of him tearing apart the universe willingly.

with a mask and a new name, perhaps she would be able to find a distinction. but it was all so new. too sudden to be pensive.

leia found herself very much alone even though the people around her were essentially the same. she and han worked on different things and spent time apart, luke was always off somewhere on some mission in the galaxy. 

they were rarely next to her but they had always been with her. now their presence was entirely out of reach.

how quickly she lost everyone.


	4. iv.

no one had to tell her because she already knew.

han killed, ren the killer.

so simple and yet she didn't foresee it. 

usually she had an instinct for these kinds of things. she thought of it as a gut feeling but was often told it was the force at work. but the force had bent into forms she couldn't comprehend, or she had been too focused on the other part of the mission, destroying what would have destroyed the entire resistance. 

she had thought about han because she wanted him to be safe, and she had thought about her son because she wanted him to come back. but it had just been thoughts. she was a general. she had to pay attention to the larger scale, not just the individuals she cared about.

so she hadn't foreseen it. even if she had, what could she have done? she couldn't have gotten a message through to han fast enough, that kind of communication wasn't available. she didn't know how to use the force to get a message through to ben. she couldn't have done that, either. she only could have stopped it if she hadn't started it.

she did not want to regret that she had told han to go to him. she had believed so fully, and hoped so completely, just as she had when she was young. maybe, after the endless years that her son had been away, he could come back. it wouldn't be easy. not after acting as a puppet of the darkness for several years.

but now neither one of them was coming home. 

it was easy to feel helpless now. feeling like she had a decision earlier, a way to patch a hole that didn't exist yet, plagued her. she had to keep reminding herself that while things could've gone differently so much of it was out of her hands. not in a helpless way. in a way that there was nothing more she could do by worrying if there might've been something she could've done.

han wouldn't have wanted that. he might not even want her to grieve. there was no avoiding that, though. but none of these details, none of these if only's. only trying to figure out what to do next, now that kylo ren had killed his father.

maybe she would never forgive him. maybe she wasn't capable of it. and how could she blame herself for that? gone was her husband and her brother and her son. all of that came from kylo ren. without kylo ren she would still have a family, while now she had nothing. less than before. there was no coming back and it was his fault.

was there hope? was there another way?

it hadn't been instantaneous. the force, it seemed, let her know that much. there was more than just kylo ren laying eyes on han and taking him out immediately. there was more. there was something like compassion, something like longing. 

it was so hazy. it was so hard to tell.

but perhaps not all his blood was cold. that was hope. that was hope that maybe things could be worse though they were awful.

besides that. there had to be hope outside of the two men she kept thinking so much about. distracting herself - no, not distracting, just placing her thoughts elsewhere - would help her to heal. if this was even something that would allow her to heal.

there were others she loved. others she fostered and felt a connection, a push to be a mother for even though she couldn't place why. she would love them and teach them as much as she could manage.

but born with ben was doubt. maybe she couldn't be a good mother. and she thought we could've done better but she had done as much as she could for ben. yet he had turned away completely. if she couldn't place every point where she had gone wrong, she couldn't reassure herself that she could mother anyone else without them falling either. everything looped back around to him, her son, who she had lost so long ago but maybe now for good. she couldn't tell yet.

work would be her sanctuary. fighting against the first order, attempting to maintain some good in the universe even when all was going wrong. these battles were escalating into complete war, surely. the resistance was a cause she cared about. she was devoted to it, completely. or she tried to be. she would continue trying until something changed and she couldn't any more. 

she would love and she would work. that was what she had done her entire life, and this would not be any different. she prayed so. maybe, for a few scattered moments, she would forget that han was dead and that her son was the one who killed him. maybe then it wouldn't hurt so much. maybe she could work, she could fight for good and light and anything but the suffering that was laced into her life.

but it was unrealistic to think those moments would happen so soon. how could they? time was necessary. she didn't have any of that, and she couldn't get any. 

she would think of her son. she would think of her husband. she would ache, and ache, and ache. she would get so used to aching that she might not feel the ache any longer. it would become a part of her. it would cloud her vision and her logic and she would forgive herself for it later because she was grieving. 

perhaps for her own sake, she hoped that once the haze of grief passed she could close her eyes and feel that same haze within a part of kylo ren that had been buried. that would be ben. that would be remorse. that would be her son, her blood. 

then, maybe, she could forgive him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is very much inspired by bloodline, which is why bloodline is included as one of the fandoms. it is an incredible look into leia's life and thoughts while still giving an incredible story. reading it made me realize just how much leia has lost throughout her life, and particularly through vader and her son. something about this tragedy inspired me to write. and here we are. a lot of the thoughts in this piece are speculation about some of the backstory of kylo ren and what may happen in the future. i hope to see some of these elements in the last jedi. i also know i will be sobbing should any of these elements come up. i hope you enjoyed reading!!


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